1. Introduction

RIKEN is Japan’s largest comprehensive research institution renowned for high-quality research in a diverse range of scientific disciplines. The purpose of the supercomputer system is to contribute to scientific and technological research consistent with RIKEN’s mission.

RIKEN do not charge fees for using the RIKEN Supercomputer System. This is because we want to provide computation environment as free and comfortable as possible to RIKEN researchers and help them obtain better research results. However, more than 800 million yen are being spent to keep this environment in a year. To distribute computing resources between users means research fee necessary to conduct researches is distributed between computer users. So, RIKEN’s regulations are to review research proposals beforehand for fair allocation of computational resources.

For the review, proposers estimate the computation time they will need, and their proposals are reviewed whether they are valuable worth the computation time (cost). Small proposals that use less than 1% are reviewed by the Information Systems Division at any time upon submission. Proposals that use 1% or more of the either computing resource (General use category) meets two times a year, which are reviewed by the Special Committee of Research Environment (scored by the Project Review WG). Committee and WG members are selected from extensive research fields that RIKEN is actively involved in. It is requested that you write the description of your research to be understood by the reviewers.

For the review, proposers estimate the computation time they will need, and their proposals are reviewed whether they are valuable worth the computation time (cost). Small proposals that use less than 1% are reviewed by the Information Systems Division at any time upon submission. Proposals that use 1% or more of the either computing resource (General use category) meets two times a year, which are reviewed by the Special Committee of Research Environment (scored by the Project Review WG). Committee and WG members are selected from extensive research fields that RIKEN is actively involved in. It is requested that you write the description of your research to be understood by the reviewers.

2. Responsibility

Usage report and the handling of research results are stipulated in the the article 15 of Supercomputer System Usage Policy. Using the system violating the Policy may result in the cancellation of your account or will affect future proposals from you.

3. Usage Categories

We set up three types of user categories: exclusive use, general use and quick use, each with different available computational resources (core time). Please make an application appropriate for your research.

General use project (Reviewed in March and September basically)

Quick use project(Reviewed year-round except for the end of each fiscal year)

Applicants of General use projects have to estimate necessary computing time in the usage of trial or quick use before applications.

General use project is a category for project which needs more than 1% of the CPU resources of GW-MPC and BW-MPC, and it is need to estimate necessary computing time in previous usage. Quick use projects are permitted to use 1% of each computing resource.
Total computing resources for 12 months
(General Use can apply to use those resources.)

GW-MPC

302,746 kilo core hoursEach application should be within 20% in FY2019

BW-MPC

294,336 kilo core hoursEach application should be within 10% in FY2019

4. Application Method (Forms were changed)

Project representatives have to make all of members of project understand the usage policy, and submit necessary forms as your requirements. Please do not request to make new accounts for those who will not execute jobs actually.

Proposal of new Quick use project including request of new accounts: Form 1

Proposal of General use Project: Form 2a and 2b

Adding existing or new accounts to existing project: Form3

Changing information of existing accounts : Form3

It is the most important point that

e-mail address ***@riken.jp

is needed in the first step of submission in which upload URLs is sent to applicants or replacements.

Applicants who don’t have ***@riken.jp must ask someone in laboratory of RIKEN to get an upload URL and transfer it to applicants. Then anyone can upload applications by accessing the upload URL from anywhere even if it is outside RIKEN.

Please transfer this announcement to assistant or others who are in charge of clerical work of your laboratory and let them know new methods of submission.